Shares of storage technology pioneer NetApp jumped nearly 5% in late trading after the company this afternoon reported[1] fiscal Q2 revenue and profit that topped Wall Street's expectations, and forecast the current quarter higher as well.
CEO George Kurian called the results "strong," and a sign the company has been "successfully executing against our plan to scale our cloud business while growing in the storage market."
Kurian said the company is a "primary beneficiary" of digital transformation activities of its customers.
Growth in revenue was lead by the company's software offering, which surged 14%, year over year, and 34%, quarter over quarter, to $417 million, almost a third of revenue.
Hardware revenue declined 18%, year over year.
NetApp said its revenue from public cloud services, on an annualized basis, reached $216 million in the quarter, triple the rate a year earlier.
More details on the quarter are available in a separate seet of financial data[2].
"I am confident in our ability to drive long-term growth, extend our hybrid cloud leadership, and deliver value for customers, partners, and shareholders," said CEO Kurian.
For the three months ended in October, NetApp reported revenue of $1.42 billion, up 3.3%, year over year, and earnings per share of $1.05, excluding some costs.
Analysts had been modeling $1.32 billion in revenue and 73 cents per share in profit.
For the current quarter, the company forecast revenue in a range of $1.34 billion to $1.49 billion, and EPS in a range of 94 cents to $1.02, excluding some costs. That is better than the Street consensus for $1.37 billion and 91 cents per share.
Shares of NetApp initially jumped as high as $58.59 in late trading, an 8% gain, and are currently up about 5%, at $56.97.